I regretted finishing my preparations. Idleness was something I was used to but it was almost always an opportunity for Graham to torment me.
I sheathed my ropeless assegai, and held my machete in my right hand, hooked assegai in my left. I crouched, watching the carcass. Ready.
“It pains me to admit it, mortal…but you’re actually good at this,” Graham said, sounding a bit hesitant.
That was unexpected. I almost responded. Almost.
“You’re a skilled Blood Hunter, a young and well-muscled chap. And, as a demon, I am a master of sexuality, so I know that you are considered attractive by your fellows. You are confident in a fight. Driven. Focused…not a fool.”
I didn’t like where this was going.
“Which makes me wonder…why are you so bad with people? So coy around women? You could have bedded dozens of women in these last few months. I can see the hunger in your eyes. The longing. But you never act on it. It’s not that you lack confidence. The way you rush towards danger isn’t foolhardiness. It’s knowledge that you will come out alive at the end.”
Were those ripples in the water? I focused on the surface of the dark water, trying to ignore the creature as he loomed closer towards me.
Graham leaned closer. The drizzle turned to rain. I held my blades underneath my tarp raincoat to keep the pulp on the metal.
“You hold yourself back, Guy,” Graham whispered, leaning even closer and closer. I kept my eyes on the water and the carcass.
“Could it be…”
Yes, the water was definitely moving.
Graham grinned, wide.
“Could it be that you still have your foreskin?”
I flinched, just as the water exploded, showering me with ice cold liquid. I hoped my blades remained dry. A dark brown serpent as wide as an elephant and still snaking its away from the river emerged from the brackish water. Its head did not look reptilian. It looked almost like a horse-skull, draped in eel-hide.
The serpent lunged towards the carcass, crunching bone and ripping half of the calf’s body into its mouth.
I shot forward, Graham disappearing in a poof. The serpent didn’t notice me, as it munched on the calf’s head and forelegs. Bones and all!
I kept low, sticking to its blind spot, even as Graham’s comment still rattled me. But it shouldn’t! I was a Blood Hunter. I had abandoned that other path. It was closed to me. Forever.
The serpent swallowed its meal and considered the other half of the calf.
Yes…eat it. Eat it.
The serpent unhinged its jaw and consumed the other half of the calf in a single bite. I almost breathed a sigh of relief. Until I saw a glint of glass.
The bottle had fallen out. How did that even happen?!
Well, looks like I had to do this the hard way.
The rope connected to the tree trailed behind me. Some men would have thrown the assegai, despite it being used for stabbing. I knew better. I rushed the body of the serpent, the part that still touched the ground and hadn’t reared up to swallow its meal.
Crunch. My boot broke a branch. The serpent’s head spun towards me. It had black eyes. Black like the void. My body wanted to freeze. Or flee.
But I didn’t let it. I surged forward and leapt the extra distance. The momentum and my red root enchantment let my hooked assegai sink deeply into the creature’s flesh, even as its head turned to bite down where I had been a second before.
It reared up with an almighty roar. A roar that did not sound like thunder. It was thunder!
With the rope secure, I chopped at the creature, digging a crevice into its eel flesh. Like slicing through butter. It thundered again, convulsing its snake body to lash out at me. I managed to dodge, anticipating its movements. This was the thing about big creatures. They were slow.
The serpent chomped down on the ground, near the rope. It missed me and the rope. I stabbed it in the head, causing it to rear up. Before it could lash out again, I ran along the side of its body slashing a groove into it. Then, my blade met resistance.
The rain. It had washed away the pulp. And now the hide was strong again.
I watched in horror as the wounds I had just made began to knit closed.
Why, oh why, did so many monsters have regeneration capabilities?!
I surveyed the battlefield, rolling out of the way as the serpent’s horse-skull head bit down into the mud near me.
What could wound it? Think. Think!
The poison!
Racing against the roiling serpent, I rushed towards the glass bottle. But the fight had covered it in mud! I went to where I remembered it last, just as thunder rang out in my ears and the creature slammed into me. I felt a crack. I hoped it was a stick and not a rib!
My body hit something taut and plummeted into the mud. Got a mouthful of it too! I reached my hand out and felt the rope. It was fraying!
Oh dear.
I lifted my face out of the mud, just as the shadow of the serpent loomed above me. Those eyes…those pitch-black eyes.
It turned around. I slowly lifted myself up as the creature rushed to the shoreline, my rope fraying behind it.
I swore, loudly, and bolted towards it as it rapidly disappeared into the depths. Closer, closer. Its head was already submerged. The tree was bending. I cut at the last bit of the creature left on land just as it pulled away.
The rope snapped.
Graham appeared on my shoulder, carrying the bottle of poison, coated in mud.
“Well, better luck next time.”
The remaining rope rapidly trailed into the water.
I grabbed the bottle, causing Graham to disappear from shock, as I dropped my machete and clutched the rope. I was pulled under.
Graham had said I wasn’t a fool. It was almost a compliment. Too bad he was wrong.
I had only a split second to take a breath before the brown water consumed me. It was dark here. Dark and wet. As my eyes adjusted, I could only see the rope, and the tail-end of the mammoth serpent shooting through the depths.
I managed to manoeuvre the bottle into my vest pocket, and, with two hands, I edged myself up the rope. Further and further, even as my lungs burned.
Why did I do this?
The serpent didn’t relent. I could see dark liquid…red liquid…moving in the water. Seeping from a wound that hadn’t closed.
I pulled myself closer, and closer. Its tail, now by my side, buffeted against me. Only the water cushioned me from the blow. Everything hurt.
This was not my village. Not my people.
I reached the end of the rope. The wound was further up. With my free hand, I retrieved my other assegai, and stabbed it into the serpent’s hide. It didn’t give way easily but, with two blows, it pierced flesh. I held on to that as I pulled out the hooked assegai, and then hammered it further up the snaking body.
The villagers weren’t paying me for this. I would be lucky to get a single meal out of it. Then why? Why help them?
I scaled the monster’s body, my already blurry vision blurring more. The blood flow was getting heavier. I was close. But my sight was darkening. How long had I been under?
This was not my village. Not my monster. My village was dead, destroyed by bloodsuckers.
Yet, I kept going. Clawing my way, inch by bloody inch.
My hand slipped, and my assegai was lost to the rapids.
A black eye, the size of a football, stared at me. A cut seeped blood above its eye. My stab from earlier. It hadn’t closed. Good.
I rammed my remaining assegai deep into its eyes. It convulsed but kept swimming. But, my goal here wasn’t to kill it. It was to get a good grip. With my spare hand, I reached for the bottle of poison, and thrust it deeply into the cut. Pressed it deeper and deeper. Like a blunt knife into a gut wound. And, when it was deep enough, I smashed it. Glass cut into my hand, and the serpent vibrated with painful ferocity. Its previously dead straight swimming faltered, swaying side to side, and it hit the river edge, almost
crushing me.
Why did I slay other people’s monsters?
My vision went black. My mouth opened involuntarily, and water came flooding in.
Why did I take this path?
Perhaps…
It was because somebody had to.
Chapter 14. Survival
My eyes flickered open to the warm orange glow of firelight, bouncing off a stone ceiling. The crackling of a wood fire sent sparks towards the rock. For the first time in a long time, I felt warm.
Graham’s almost monkey-like face looked down at me, a satisfied grin on his face.
“I take back what I said. You’re not that good at this.”
I wracked my brain for what had happened. A serpent. The legendary inkanyamba. Maybe. And I had killed it. I think? But what after?
The last thing I remembered was that I had died.
Well, I had been wrong plenty of times. I slowly lifted myself up, realising that there was a blanket covering me. Scratchy, but warm. It wasn’t mine. I surveyed the small overhang, looking out onto the mouth of the river that had almost killed me. My backpack, machete and other belongings were sodden, drying next to the fire, alongside a similar backpack, and long spear with an assegai head. I doubted any of that belonged to my tokoloshe friend.
Friend? Well…I guess.
Graham reappeared sitting on a rock by the fire, clutching a jar of liquid that smelled like methylated spirits. He drank greedily.
My body stung. In many places. But I could move. I could breathe. There were bandages all over my skin, where I suspect debris in the river had cut into me, but I hadn’t broken a rib.
Finally, I gave up trying to figure out what happened myself.
“So…” I asked, my voice croaky. That toxic booze was seeming a bit more appetising now. “What happened?”
Graham held up a finger, telling me to wait as he gulped down a bit more. And by that, I mean he chugged the entire jug and then tossed it over his shoulder.
“It took a while to catch up to you but, after you killed that overgrown snake, I was able to fish you out. Easy peasy. Wasn’t going to do CPR though. Not that I don’t like you or anything, it’s just that my breath may have just killed you. And if I killed you, then I’d die. And can’t be having that, can we?”
Involuntarily, I coughed. I had inhaled a lot of river water. But I was still breathing.
“So, if you didn’t revive me, who did?”
“I did,” a Xhosa man spoke, as a figure clothed in black approached the fire. He carried a spear like the one in the cave. Three juicy fish were spitted on the shaft.
He placed the spear over the open flames, elevated on some piles of bricks, and took a seat opposite me.
He was older than me. In his mid-thirties, perhaps. Three scars ran down from his cheek to his chin.
“Well, that isn’t exactly true,” he continued, slowly rotating the fish over the fire. Like a spit. “I helped the tokoloshe drag you out of the river and then got the excess water out of your system. But you healed fast.”
“Ikhubalolika lanjeni,” I said. I did not explain what I meant by that. I saw the recognition in his eyes.
The man nodded in respect. “The tokoloshe…”
“My name’s Graham, mortal!”
“No, it’s not…the tokoloshe said that you are a Blood Hunter. But I don’t make a habit of believing demons at river edges. But it seems that he was speaking the truth. I’m glad. How are you feeling?”
I still felt the rush of water on my flesh, as if it was peeling away my skin. I probably had broken a rib. Which meant that the juice had worked.
“Alive,” I answered. “And thankful. My name is Guy Mgebe. And I presume you are also a Blood Hunter.”
The man offered his hand over the fire and I accepted it, sitting upright and wearing the blanket around my shoulders to keep out the night chill.
“Blessing Ndaba,” he replied. “I have walked the path for almost two decades now. You?”
“I completed my training four years ago under Master Silumko.”
Blessing’s eyes widened with recognition. He grinned, twisting the scar on his cheek.
“Silumko never speaks of his other apprentices. But I knew he had others. When last did you see him? Is the old man still kicking?”
I grinned, faintly.
“Just like him to never discuss anything that isn’t directly related to beheading ghouls and impaling vampires. I saw him two years ago by New Ulundi. We tracked a pack of nightkin together. Before we could collect the reward, he vanished.”
Blessing nodded, understandingly. “The old man is alive. Will take much more than this path to kill him. No matter how much he tries to ingrain it in us that nothing lasts forever…”
“What a wonderfully cheerful man,” Graham interjected, taking a swig from another moonshine jug. Where did he keep getting them?
Blessing ignored my tokoloshe companion and indicated my neck. “What monster?”
I almost smiled. When two Blood Hunters met, it was tradition to discuss the hunt. To compare scars.
We were meant to hunt alone, but that didn’t mean we weren’t connected in some way.
“Ghoul,” I answered. “Slashed me when I wasn’t looking.”
“And?”
“Put an assegai in its eye and used my last bullet to put down its friend.”
Blessing nodded with respect. I inclined my head at his scar.
“Shaka’s Chosen. Nasty one with steel claws. Wasn’t too dangerous, but it still stings. That zombie’s bits are strewn across the Transkei now.”
I nodded, acknowledging his skill, as he took the fish off the makeshift spit and handed one to me. The outside was charred, but that didn’t matter. The flesh within was juicy. And there was a lot of it. Blessing must’ve been a skilled fisherman. Or he just bought it. Which made him a good hunter for having money to do so.
“I couldn’t find a knife among your things…” Blessing said, using his own knife to cut up the fish on a tin plate. I was eating on a similar one. The tail of the last fish was hanging loosely out of Graham’s mouth. I hadn’t seen him start eating.
“Garkain. Ate it.”
Blessing nodded, understanding, and retrieved another knife from his satchel. A basic thing. Medium length blade. Thin. Wouldn’t work against bigger game, but a knife was always good to have. For practical things.
“Keep it. It belonged to…another hunter.”
I nodded my head in thanks and reverence for the hunter who had completed his path.
“How did they die?” I asked, cutting into the fish.
Blessing stared into the fire. He stopped cutting. Graham used a fish bone to pick his teeth then returned to the bottle.
“A vampire…he was tracking the creature up near the Magocracy border. Not of the Blood, but still advanced. A few mutations. He managed to corner the creature and kill it but succumbed to his wounds.”
We ate in silence, with only the crackle of the fire and Graham’s glugging to fill the night air. Finally, I finished, and thanked Blessing quietly for the meal.
We would probably camp together for the evening, then go our separate ways in the morning. Whoever woke first would leave. If a mindwarping vampire was to capture one of us, we didn’t want to have any information at all that could lead to tracking our companion. This was the path. In solitude…safety. In sacrifice…
“So…” Graham said, loudly, before letting out a belch. “This is what you Blood Hunters do? You go after pint-sized vamps or giant snakes minding their own business, and then pretend you’re on some grand quest to wipe out the Blood? Pah! Why don’t you all just use your weapons and potions and go after Nkosi Igazi himself? Storm Mqanduli. Then you’ll have something to write about your path.”
Blessing didn’t even wince at the tokoloshe’s drunken words. He had mastered dealing with Graham already.
I gritted my teeth but couldn’t restrain myself.
“Mqanduli is dead.
The Blood drained it dry. Destroyed it.”
“And turned it into a fortress,” Blessing added.
Graham shrugged. “How hard could it be?”
“A hill-top keep manned by at least two dozen vampires with at least two mutations per a head. Impi patrols during the day, ghoul patrols at night. Grid-like streets, running between windowless boxes where the humans live like less than cattle. No one can enter or leave without Nkosi Igazi’s say-so. Even the impi fear to go there…”
“But you have?” Blessing asked, firelight flickering off his face, twisting and obscuring his scar.
I nodded, and that silenced both the Blood Hunter and the tokoloshe.
“I heard something,” Blessing finally said. “When I took a job near Ngqoko, the client spoke about a Blood Hunter who fit the description of Silumko. Our mentor left a message.”
He paused, retrieving a scrap of paper from his satchel.
“There is to be a moot…a meeting of those following the path…”
Graham was the only one who wasn’t stunned by this. Blood Hunters never had meetings. Never had councils. At most, we worked in pairs on one or two missions. But we never put ourselves all in one place. The risk was far too great.
“Why? Why now?” I asked.
“The traditions aren’t working,” Blessing replied, sounding empty. He had dealt with the ramifications of this invitation before meeting me. “We must meet…to change the path.”
“Change the path? But…we are the path. It defines us.”
“And it hasn’t gotten us anywhere. Dammit! The tokoloshe is right,” Blessing snarled, glaring at Graham, who feigned sleep, cuddling his empty moonshine bottle.
Blessing stared into the embers of the fire and sighed.
“I travel out towards the mountain and the moot. Tomorrow. Will you join me?”
The path…the traditions that I had accepted, at the expense of renouncing those of my ancestors. The path that had almost gotten me killed. Again, and again.
What choice did I have?
Chapter 15. Moot
Blessing and I travelled on his motorcycle to retrieve mine by the village. They rewarded my slaying of the serpent with beef and mielies. Graham wasn’t impressed.
Blood Hunter: An Urban Fantasy Vampire Hunting Novel Page 11
